composing with sound + light

Sound & Image

This is an overview of sound as it functions in relation to screens and images (television, film, with a little bit of computer/internet thrown in there). Some of it will be familiar to many of you. Skim the parts that you already know, carefully read the parts that are new. Sight, Sound, Motion is a traditional media aesthetics text and it does a good job of clearly presenting some of the vocabulary and concepts that we will be exploring throughout the semester. Realize that many of the concepts or rules are simply “the way it has been done” and rules would not exist if they can not be broken.

Remember:

By Friday (1/20) at midnight, send me a link to a video that you are interested in–something that you want to discuss or an example of work that you are interested in making that seems in line with the themes of this class. Email the link to peterb@virginia.edu with the subject “My favorite snail video”. It could also be documentation of a performance or a sculptural audiovisual piece/installation. I will compile the links on a page on Saturday (I’ll send an email to let you know when they are up). Watch them before class on Monday.

By Monday (1/23) at midnight, create a video channel to host your projects for the semester (youtube, vimeo, etc). It can be a new dedicated channel or a channel that you have been using. Be sure that embedding is enabled and send me the link to your channel.

Your favorite snail videos

9 Thoughts

DER KLEINERE RAUM is so magical and uses sound so well, esp. when the objects change to black and when the trees grow around the boy. I really love how the video has such a dark atmosphere but at the same time is so romantic and childlike. We also sort of become the boy and the forest at the same time, outside of the scene but equally confused and curious. It’s also just really strange to feel this need to protect the child while still relating to the identity of the child ~ and not being able to do anything about it. The artistry is incredible and I’m wondering if they made more than one model of the child or kept placing the same model in different positions. I love when these different artistic mediums (claymation and animation) merge a realistic world with a magical dimension, esp. when the dimensions are a bit dark. I think that it sort of plays with a human desire to know and to understand everything, and not being able to easily understand puts everything on hold for a second. It feels like in the moment that we are trying to figure something out, we have to put our lives outside of whatever we are watching on hold, and sort of just have to float until the end. I wonder if the film would still be as magical if it used a single song as its only sound…probably not…or maybe it would’ve felt more powerful if the song was very quiet and melodic and curious??? This makes me want to go spend a year living in a northern forest or some sort of forest in like a lotr sort of world…at the same time heightens my fear of crows

I really enjoyed the Max Cooper–Order from Chaos video…I would be interested to know what kind of program was used to create this video/ Also, I would like to find out whether or not some of the more realistic imagery within the video was taken from somewhere else or created from scratch on the computer!!

I’m interested in the fact that all except for one video are animated (provide you categorize stop-motion as animation and not live-action). It’s definitely a more exciting creative endeavor to invent a soundscape for movements that don’t exist in nature—or simply that we don’t see every day. The sounds we associate with the things we see might limit the way we can create a soundscape for footage taken from real life but I’m still excited about that prospect.

I am so taken aback by Allison Schulnik’s “Eager.” It’s so hauntingly beautiful to me and it’s a little hard for me to express why. A lot of the videos posted this week evoke memories, as Oneohtrix Point Never’s video did last Thursday. Through bringing up objects from our pasts and using glitchy audiovisual that make us think of old VHS sets, these videos have the power to make you think about yourself while simultaneously about the film. What I found so jarring about “Eager” was that I wasn’t able to do this. It transported me to a world in which I am not a part of and I loved this. The viewer is given moments of “reality” but they are so surreal and almost misplaced that they become ethereal. The audio constantly oscillates between darkness and beauty and the juxtaposition made me feel confused; it almost felt like there was a battle between these two forces. Despite seeing the figures wear each other as skins, I couldn’t help but find the entire video bewitching. I could watch this film a thousand more times.

Echoing some of what Gillian said, it’s really interesting to me that so many of the videos that people sent in are either partially or entirely “animated” or “constructed” (which I see some of the stop motion falling under). Many of the videos also seemed to put visual before audio, or the audio was constructed to enhance the visual. Obviously there are some where this isn’t the case or where the relationship is more evenly weighted, but in terms of process I think it’s a really important thing for us to consider when making our own work. I don’t think there is a right or wrong method necessarily, but I do think it’s important to know what that method is as its happening. As we are creating audio-visual work, we’re inherently creating relationships with our work, whether is a symbiotic or disjointed, harmonious or dissonant. The work that considers this, in my opinion, is the most successful. The videos by Susi Sie and Maxime Causeret are two more obvious examples of how sound and visual seem to be in a harmonious relationship, working together, depending on one another, etc. Alex Da Corte’s piece seems to rely on the visual to create the audio: the electrical sound is a product of the visual construction. This is a less striking example, but it’s relationship is still vital without being as overt. Our brains attempt to make sense of the senses (haha) that are being stimulated. In most cases shown above, the two enhance one another, but in thinking on this, if the two are disjointed, tension can be created, discomfort, etc. etc. I’m going on a long tangent, but basically in watching all of these videos I was really excited in thinking about how audio visual work has the unique ability to create relationships of the senses.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I am so drawn to the video I submitted, Chrysopoeia, (and recently have been to others like it), and Gillian’s comment helped put my sentiments into words a little better. These films are made by shooting substances like milk, oil, ink and paint very close up with a macro lens, so that the image presented is almost unrecognizable and appears almost as animation. I’m really intrigued by this process of making part of our world –something like milk that everyone has in their kitchen– seem like an entirely different one by shifting the perspective, and through the addition of a soundscape that creates notions of beyond-Earth.

After looking at the reading, I wanted to add a little bit to my thoughts. The reading goes into the specifics of the relationships that can be created with sound and the visual, which I think are important. I’m really interested in the non-obvious ways that this relationships can be created, specifically how sound can be a device to create structure, which can be done simply by aligning or unaligning the rhythms, which I think is how some of the video choices above operate.

While I was searching for a video to post, I found myself being drawn to abstract videos that played with reality through animation and various effects. My mind jumped to videos that were rich with color, texture, patterns, and light, and I avoided searching for a video with a clear narrative. Abstract videos tend to allow a freedom to experiment with sounds in a way that may take the pressure off of composing a complete song or piece. This is a strategy for creating that seems appealing to me, as I personally like the idea of allowing visuals to distract a listener from having expectations built for the sound that accompanies the visuals. By combining audio and video, the ability arises to create a work that is greater than the parts, and is often more powerful than these elements left to stand alone. I thought I/O Input/Output stood out, as it was set in a more realistic setting than most of the other videos, however, it was still a surreal experience to watch. It inspired me to consider experimenting with everyday objects and seemingly common settings in an artistic way. I am interested in the process behind the auditory and visual components of theses videos and wonder how the different artists approached their work. Did they start with a video that needed sound, a song that needed a video, or were they composing both simultaneously?